Here is the round-up of the various races I'm watching this month:
Series: Mets 1, St. Louis 1
Thu, 12 Oct: Mets 2, STL 0
Fri, 13-Oct: STL 9, Mets 6
I was hoping for another Subway series, but a Democratic majority in Congress is a nice consolation prize…
UPDATE: The Mets have pulled even at 2-2 with a rout on Sunday. Nothing so dramatic on the political scorecard over the weekend.
congressional elections
demomcratic party
baseball
playoffs
mets
This town is full of old E-MU gear (as well as old E-MU employees). In recent weeks I was able to pick up two old modules for my substantial E-MU synth collection. The first is a fully functional Orbit V2:
This module was quite popular in its day, it features techno sounds that I don't believe E-MU has re-released for Emulator X or Proteus X. It is also as far as I know the only one of the modules with the special “scratcher” function that models turntable scratching of samples.
I also aquired another pre-run Morpheus. I'm not sure it has quite the extensive collection of non-production filters as my main Morpheus, but it does have a rather interesting demo track,a small clip of which I provide here for your listening pleasure.
The full demo is a little over two minutes long, and practically begs to be imported into Emulator X2 and used as the source for a new composition. Stay tuned…
From an AP article today:
BURLINGTON, Vt. – For three decades, Rep. Bernie Sanders has been a party of one, an avowed socialist who rails against corporate America, Republicans, Democrats and all those he believes fail the poor and working families. Now 65, the Brooklyn-born independent and his crusade could end up in the Senate.
It's great to see Bernie Sanders succeeding in his Senate bid. I had the opportunity to meet him while I was at Yale, during a private dinner before his appearance at the Yale Political Union. I got to attend because I was the organization's secretary at the time, basically a glorified stenographer. But I did often lace minutes with my dry humor, a practice that annoyed more uptight members. I did send a copy of the minutes from the meeting Sanders attended to his congressional office, and got both a letter and phone response saying he got a kick of the transcripts. The humor and style was really a New York thing that people like Sanders can appreciate and others, well, appreciate a bit less. From the same AP article, consider this comment from one of Sanders' critics about his style:
Part of it is just his mannerisms and his Brooklyn accent and his kind of loud reaction to things,” said Sara Gear Boyd of Burlington, Vermont's longtime Republican national committeewoman. “He's always kind of in-your-face with his reactions. Then, philosophically, he's worlds apart from the way most Republicans think. His solutions are truly much more socialistic, and that just kind of grates.”
Let's see, loud, Brooklyn, “socialistic”(sp)…hey, what's not to like?
It's been a little while since I've posted an actual cat-and-synth photo. Here we have a kitty posing with a “kittennettik” instrument called the fyrall. From the website:
fyrall is a multo-jungo-world dialer, it is a freak. Within, it has three electronic wheels, one made out of wigglers, one made out of digital counting temples, and the third reconnects the others. at every move it may be in a state of internal paradox. it is always looking for a state of rest and it can never find it. Experimenting on the fyrall is fun because new rewirings will cause it to spasm in the weirdest ways.
The fyrall and the other kittennetiks use chaotic cicruits for sound synthesis and control. The creator of these instruments has some specs and papers, which are, well, quite interesting. See for yourself.
My interest is definitely piqued. However, I might try looking at one of the “paper circuits” they provide before considering any of the full-blown kits.
synth
synthesizer
cat
kitty
kittennettik
circuit bending
chaos
WCB #66 is being hosted this week by Sarah over at chefsarahjane. Sounds like she is going away on Sunday, and I'm busy today preparing for my set at the headphone festival in SF (see the previous post). Thus, I looked back in my rather extensive collection of Luna photos and came up with this action sequence from last February:
It was around Valentine's Day and I saw that little pink-heart toy during a routine pet-store run – it was pretty inevitable that I would buy it for her, and as you can see she loved it!
The toy is still around (probably under the sofa) though the black strings are long gone.
It's been a rather pleasant October afternoon, warm, breezy, with a clear sky. The mobile sculpture Airborne catches both the wind and the waning October sun:
The garden plants are doing about as well as they have all year. Admist a recent burst of flowers, I noticed this rather impressive spider web:
…not to mention the rather impressive spider that inhabits it:
The peace of the backyard was briefly interrupted by the sound of cats fighting. More worrisome was the sound of an angry dog barking in response. After peeking over the fence to investigate, I was assured by a neighbor that it was “just some crazy cats.” One of the “crazy cats” wandered into view and I immediately recognized him as the friendly grey tabby that often visits my yard (I jokingly refer to him for a while as Luna's “boyfriend”). Foruntately, he seemed to be none the worse for wear.
Cats, or more specifically, cat allergies, have been much in the news this weekend. The New York Times featured an article on a California biotech company that is breeding hyperallergenic “no sneeze” kitties, two of which are pictured to the right. The market for the hypoallergenic cats, which the company says will cost about $4000 USD each, is people who love cats in spite of their allergies. It is certainly a high price tag, but I gather so are the medications for the most severe allergies. Those who seek a more affordable feline companion and want to continue to adopt shelter cats can take heart in a study supporting the theory that having pets cuts allergy risks. Finally, there is this story from Wales about a hospital fighting to keep their cat Tibs, who has chearing up patients for years. While I do my best to avoid hospitals, I know having a cat around would help me during a health crisis.
I had an opportunity last night to jam with some friends and acquaintances I have not seen in a while. I played keyboard, with primarily piano, electric piano and organ sounds, though I did add a Moogerfooger pedal to the mix. Musically, we did a mixture of jazz standards, some 12-bar and 16-bar “headless” jams, and several trippy free-jazz experiments with keyboard, guitar, bass and drums. The latter reminded me of how I would like to get together a standard “quartet” at some point that freely moves back and forther between jazz/funk and experimental improvisation. It would be quite a contrast to my recent performances, but still consistent with my musical vision and sensibilities…
…in another example of slipping back and forth between disparate musical styles, I was listening earlier to alternating tracks from Ethiopiques, which I described in an earlier article, and the rather dark, political, and vaguely Middle-Eastern electronic music of Muslimgauze. The two albums could not be more different in geography, style, production and social context, yet they seemed to work well together. The dark electronica of Muslimgauze worked for me, dispite an implicit political view I probably don't share, and the gritty funk of Ethiopiques brought me back to reality. Perhaps here is the seed of another musical project…
…or just idle thoughts on a warn autumn day…
autumn
garden
spider web
cats
cat allergies
hypoallergenic
funk
electronica
free jazz
jam
I have finally reposted my doctoral dissertation, this time in HTML format as well as PDF. The title is Perceptual Scheduling in Real-time Music and Audio Applications. I propose an algorithm for improving computational performance of expensive synthesis techniques, such as additive synthesis and resonance modeling that preserves audio quality, and measured both the improved CPU performance and the perceptual quality as measured by expert listeners in controlled experiments.
I think this actually a good time to review and reflect upon this work. Five years have passed since I graduated from UC Berkeley with my PhD. I probably have the only doctoral dissertation in Computer Science that includes James Brown as a citation. While I enjoyed working on the dissertation, including the formal experiments, the work I do now developing music software (and then using for my own composition and performance) is really a better match for who I am.
As discussed in an earlier post, I have had a sometimes challenging relationship with academic science. I have the technical and analytical “chops”, but I am too much of a creator and a romantic to find personal meaning and reward in rigorous experiments and analysis of data. I love the aesthetic appeal of science and mathematics, and especially look for unusal and serendipitous connections rather standard incremental results. Simply put, I am an artist, not a scientist, even when I'm working on software engineering projects.
phd
thesis
doctoral dissertation
music
software
computer science
This weekend's hosts, Boots, Tess and D at The Hidden Paw, have challenged us to produce Cat-in-a-Box submissions for WCB 70. That's not too hard for us, as Luna is quite fond of boxes:
In the photo above, she is caught in the act of chewing on pieces of her favorite box from Ikea. This is one of her guilty pleasures in life.
Here, we have Luna encountering an Amazon box in the hallway. I wonder how that got there…
Visit the round-up for more adorable pictures of cats in boxes, bags, and other sundry containers.
Weekend Cat Blogging
WCB
WCB70
cat
kitty
cats
photography
luna
I'm looking forward to seeing new music gear at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in San Francisco this afternoon. However, I doubt I will see anything quite as innovative as this musical robot:
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — A professor of musical technology at Georgia Tech, Gil Weinberg, enlisted the support of graduate student Scott Driscoll to create Haile — the first truly robotic musician…
…Think of Haile (pronounced Hi-lee) as a robotic partner in the percussion form of dueling banjos. Although it has numerous musical algorithms programmed into it, Haile's basic function is to “listen” to what musicians are playing and play along with them…
…The robotic drummer is not only programmed with specific pieces but also with an understanding of countless pitches, rhythms and patterns, which are used during performances. Like a concert drum solo, Haile never quite plays the same thing twice, but plays off the creations of those performing around it.
We'll know we have truly created robotic musicians when they show up late to gigs and step into the alley between sets for a smoking break and other recreational intakes.
Actually, I did some research into computer programs that can “listen” to music and generate new material that is similar but not identical, way back in high school in 1990. Basically, it recorded MIDI input, created a decision tree of sorts, and generated new music from it. I had good time working on that project, and while my teachers and a few computer-music faculty I talked to at MIT and elsewhere seemed impressed, other “distinguished scientists” brought in to review our research projects largely pooh-pooh'ed this work as “not being science.” True, it was not a science experimental per se, but I've always been bothered by those in academic science that don't value innovative engineering. This happened in graduate school as well, where the computer science faculty wanted “science.” I wonder how they would have reacted to Weinberg's musical-robot project? I have always been more interested in making things than taking measurents and analyzing data, and thus have been mostly turned off from pursuing a career in scientific research.
Seems I have politics on the brain this week, and no wonder considering the high stakes:
Not much excitement in my own district (or any other district in which I have resided during my time in California), but one does not have to go too far east to find California's Worst Representative.
Richard Pombo represents the 11th District, and is the chair of the House Resources Committee. Pombo hails from Tracy, a town that is a poster child for ugly exurban sprawl (and the butt of a lot of jokes when I was living in the East Bay). He has long been obsessed with dismantling the 1973 Endangered Species Act. In addition to being as old as I am, the Endangered Species Act protects a wide variety of plants and animals, including the San Joaquin Kit Fox that inhabits Pombo's district (pictured to the right).
From interviews and statements I've heard, on NPR and elsewhere, he seems to take pride in his work to weaken or eliminate environmental protection and sell land and resources from our National Park System and elsewhere to developers and speculators. He supports not only the oft-mentioned drilling proposal for the Artic Wildlife National Refuge, but also end the long-time ban on drilling of the California coast. His name surfaced again in recent reports about protecting the coast of Northern California (Mendocino, etc.). And, like most of his fellow conservative Republicans, all his efforts seem to be done with a sense that he is on some sort of righteous crusade.
He has also been implicated in several of the trendy Republican scandals, but that's the least of his faults.
You can read more, a lot more, at PomboWatch and Say No To Pombo. Oh, and it might be worth visiting his opponent's website, too. This is turning out to be a competitive race, so any interest and support may help send Pombo back to Tracy, and help some of our endangered friends in the process:
UPDATE: The Stockton Record covers the CA-11 debate last night between Pombo and McNerney.
congressional elections
pombo
endangered species
environment
california